Does God alone suffice?

It is easy to praise God, when we are blessed, but how about when we are in the middle of misfortune?
One of the most degrading misfortunes is loneliness. Jean Vanier tells the story of Claudia. In 1975, he welcomed Claudia into their l’Arche community New Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

“She was 7 and had spent practically her whole life in a dismal, overcrowded asylum. Claudia was blind, fearful or relationships, filled wit inner pain and anguish. Technically speaking she was autistic. Her anguish seemed to increase terribly when she arrived in the community, probably because in leaving the asylum, she lost her reference points. Everything and everyone frightened her. She screamed day and night and smeared excrement on the walls.

Claudia lived a horrible form of madness which should not be idealized or seen as a gateway to another world. Madness has a meaning. It is an escape from anguish. But there is an order in the disorder that can permit healing, if only it can be found.  20 years later Claudia was quite well. She still liked being alone but she was clearly not a lonely person. She would often sing to herself and there was a constant smile on her face. Jean Vanier asked her a question one day: “Claudia, why are you so happy?” Her answer was a smile and direct: ‘Dios’ (God).”

Loneliness can indeed become hell on earth. In fact, solitary confinement is the punishment most dreaded by prisoners. Loneliness has other side-effects like depression, self-destructing desires, lack of will to live, etc.

Today’s gospel tells us of the loneliness of Jesus. The gospel of Mark does not mention the details other gospels offered. But the few details are poignant. Jesus was in the company of angels and wild beasts. Wild beasts are not dangerous as we may suppose. Wild animals are understood as non-domestic animals– animals that don’t belong to the world of men. Jesus was accompanied by the whole creation except human beings. Jesus was having a taste of Adam’s solitude: “it is not good for man to be alone.” In a way, Jesus was fasting, not only from food, but from human company altogether.

Only after passing this test of solitude with God did Jesus come back to the human world to preach the Good News. His tested human experience that God alone suffices, gave him the authority and the content of the “GoodNews.”

We should ask ourselves if our joy comes from the assurance of being with God, or from being with people who like us? Does our happiness come from the little comforts of our life or from God alone? There is only one way to know. Testing it. Give up company, give up the little pleasures and see where your happiness goes?

Peter associated conveniently these waters of destruction with the waters of the baptism of new life: a new creation. Both the first and second readings are about new beginnings, just like the gospel is about the beginning of the public life of Jesus. In the Ark, Noah and his family begin a new creation. In the loneliness of the flood, what appears to be the end becomes the beginning, thanks to the seeds of life they spared (a pair of each species of animals). When loneliness carries the seeds of new life, it overcomes destruction with fertility.

The church invites us to fast and abstain for 40 days to remember the forty days of Jesus, and the 40 years of Israel in the desert. To accompany Jesus in this trial of being alone with the Father, we need to accept the invitation of the Church to give up our little dependencies to reach our inner loneliness with God. We need to search the seeds of life from which a new revival of faith will unveil the ever new aspect of Easter.